


Reunion 2 (i have died every day waiting for you, darling, don't be afraid, i have loved you for a thousand years...)

by angelica_barnes



Series: Reunion [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Afterlife, Character Study, Love, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 07:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14444337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: each person is described by one or two adjectives (it'll specify how many).they all fall in love and they all die and they all get an ending but they don't all get a happy one.





	Reunion 2 (i have died every day waiting for you, darling, don't be afraid, i have loved you for a thousand years...)

**Author's Note:**

> Deadly - Bucky Barnes  
> Fearful/Sacrificial - Steve Rogers/Captain America  
> Courageous - Peggy Carter  
> Beautiful - Natalia Romanov/Natasha Romanoff  
> Forgiving - Clint Barton  
> Angelic - Madison “Maddy” Nichols  
> Magical - Wanda Maximoff  
> Protective - Pietro Maximoff  
> Considerate - Vision  
> Gentle - Sam Wilson  
> Lovable - Thor  
> Lonely - Loki  
> Insecure - Sharon Carter  
> Vulnerable - Tony Stark  
> Calm - Bruce Banner  
> Generous - T’Challa  
> “Alien king” - Thanos

**Before.**

 

_ I’m with you til the end of the line _

_ Til clocks and watches run their time _

_ Til angels sleep and devils wake _

_ Til night will fade and come daybreak _

 

Deadly is born before he is such. The days pass fast as the depression sets in and still he smiles, and smiles and smiles through love and love lost and a best friend’s grin fading; he sleeps in peace in the cold dark snow at the bottom of five mountains, missing an arm. He doesn’t cry, because he wished for this; burning in hell will suit him nicely, he thinks. Ocean blue eyes are his keeper; the monsters come and drag him away.

Sacrificial is Fearful. Fearful before and now he is something else, but still he wishes for Deadly’s kisses as if they are the air he breathes; Deadly falls and Fearful chokes. No one asks if he’s alright, because they assume the answer is he has to be, but with another he attempts to drink away his sorrows; he cannot drink. It does nothing, only burns his blood, and his eyes already sting from crying and so he is alone and undone. He meets a soldier and is in love, the same as when he met a sergeant; they are one in the same as Fearful and Sacrificial have always been.

Courageous is lovely. She dances and mingles and takes control, and she also kills and shoots and fights. Two days she needs to fall in love, and he loves her too as she knew he would; his eyes linger over her shoulder at his best friend. They kiss, his eyes are open; she will never ask. She does not want to know the answer, because she already knows and can resign herself to thinking otherwise. She wishes and prays for her lover’s safety, and when Fearful dies, she mourns. She grieves, and for lost loves and opportunities only, for she is still a woman of honor; she sleeps roughly from then on out and loves a sleeping man.

 

_ I’m with you til the sunrise falls _

_ Til fire blazes up the walls _

_ Til mothers spend their time all crying _

_ Til reapers slaughter themselves for dying _

 

Beautiful has no remorse she is allowed to show. She maims and kills and takes her own pain as payment, and she has never smiled. She meets a dangerous man whom they call Deadly; he speaks only in Russian and calls her sister. They call her little spider, and she accepts her fate at seven years old as she kills the daughter of an esteemed man; she takes the child’s life while she sleeps, fingers clutched tightly around the belly of a doll, and Beautiful is struck by her appearance when she looks in the mirror afterwards. She is clean except for her hands; those are red, red, red with blood. She curls up in an alley and tries to sleep; tears come faster than dreams. Black widows don’t dream.

Forgiving is unseen. His aim is unmatched and his heart is made of platinum; he meets Beautiful on a mission. He should kill her for her crimes, but she can tire him in a way that no one else can; she is bewitching. He catches her eyes too many times and is entranced by them and their deepness; her eyes are cold in that way that only true warmth can be. He stops fighting once he’s pinned her down, and she stops struggling. She closes her eyes, and he can tell she thinks he will end her. Instead, he stands, and offers her his hand; she takes it, and the night ends with her curled in his arms in a hotel room. They’ve done nothing, not even kissed, but he presses his lips to her hair and calls in an extraction. He does not care if they disapprove.

Angelic is purer than any soul they’ve ever seen. He is kind and wise, and young and beautiful, and his wings are spread wide when he flies. He stays perched on the balcony that night, as the assassins have carelessly left the doors open; they are only thirteen floors up. He watches them, the killers, as they sleep peacefully in one another’s arms, legs tangled together beneath the sheets. There are supposed to be knives in their hearts, but Angelic sees none; he leaves only when dawn begins, and returns home to the attic of his love’s house. He sneaks into bed, lifting the covers back, and though already fast asleep, Gentle wraps his arms around Angelic and turns his head, mumbling an “I love you” into Angelic’s hair. Angelic closes his eyes and thinks of wonder; he, too, does not dream, though he is everything good there can ever be.

 

_ I’m with you til the ruses shatter _

_ Til time and space don’t seem to matter _

_ Til Satan cries and god will hate _

_ Til pastimes while the earth vibrates _

 

Magical is blinded. She does not truly see what she is becoming, what they are doing; she is like Beautiful. Kill or be killed, that is her world, and she simply accepts the rule and does not dare argue. She would win if she did, she doesn’t know. Her brother is gentle with her, sweet. He cares for her as best he can, telling her stories of home, a home she can’t and doesn’t want to remember. His eyes are as sad as hers are bright, but he tries to smile and joke for her; his facade is cracking. As she grows older, she can see through the rigid crevices his clay mask, and she thinks what she sees is a stunning young boy; she sees a monster made a man.

Protective is careful. He doesn’t wish to hurt his sister, and so he guards her from what he can, and smiles only when it is necessary and they are alone. He doesn’t want her to be punished for his poor timing, because they have been punished enough by the world. But he knows she can see through him some, with the way her eyes turn to different shades of dark and sunny; she can tell he is pretending, sometimes. He tries harder, and fails worse, and deals with the outcome again and again; he takes her pain when he can. He often can, and afterwards, he grins as wide as he can and swallows down the tears; no matter how many names they make him erase and then brand upon his skin, none of them will matter as much as hers. Guilt is not an enemy he can afford to make.

Considerate is almost too much so. He cannot act the way he thinks he should often, but they forgive him for his faults. He saves them more than he kills them, and for that they are thankful; they do not ignore his apologies, but they accept them too easily. Magical is burdened with a grief that perhaps only Fearful can understand, and Fearful is burdened with more. Considerate watches her, Magical, and he finds his heart beating faster. She blushes at his gentle fingertips tapping her arm, spelling out confessions and comforting phrases; when she falls, he falls too. Fearful watches them with sad eyes, and he is envious and exhausted, Considerate knows.

 

_ I’m with you til the sorries stop _

_ Til underdogs come out on top _

_ Til fantasy will meet its knife _

_ Til lovers cry over lost life _

 

Gentle is the quiet sort of beautiful, the one you don’t catch at first glance but instead need to observe for; Angelic is the one you look at and see immediately the delicate beauty of. They make a neat pair, all patched up and unbroken in their strange kind of mad love. Their skin stays unscarred and unbridled, though against the world they are each other’s shields; they love and they fight and they talk a big game though they crumble same as everyone else, just in their own way at the feet of their own demons. They have each other and it is enough; Gentle may have an angel at his side but it does not mean he is safe; he meets Fearful and is afraid, because Gentle has the same sadness and paranoia in his own eyes.

Lovable and Lonely are a package deal. You can’t have one without the other, and yet they are surely always separated; Lonely wants to rule. Crowns are more important to him than men, but he yields to Lovable’s sweet touches almost too easily. A hand on his face and fingers tangled in his hair; he stumbles. A pair of arms around him secure and safe; he pauses. A warm mouth pressed against his so soft and plush and undry; he hesitates. The weapons slip from his hands, the same as Lovable being unwilling to hurt Lonely. Anyone else can be unthought of, but to each other they are loyal. That, perhaps, is why the continuous betrayals of one another burns them so unceremoniously; those three words mean nothing if not whispered against the bloodied skin of a chest that’s freshly stopped its rising and falling.

Insecure is unable to fill her aunt’s bleeding shadow. She wants to, desperately, and often visits the forgetful woman until her numbered days finally count down to zero, and she has to tell Sacrificial that Courageous has died. He learns of it, and he cries, and he also tries to bond with her for some form of connection to the old days, to the dark-eyed woman smiling in a coffin beneath the dirt of Arlington; he kisses her. She kisses back, and nearly feels something, but then her gut bursts with warmth and she knows it’s guilt, not love, as Sacrificial looks back at his best friend in the car, Deadly, whose smile is pained and half-done. She looks away and squeezes Sacrificial’s hand in a gesture of comfort; he is in love with Deadly and always has been, she knows. On his way he goes, and she believes she now has him on a first-name basis; Fearful does seem a better fit.

 

_ I’m with you til the laughter shuts _

_ Til whores and whims don’t call us sluts _

_ Til kindness meets its final breath _

_ Til love and joy meet rhyme and death _

 

Vulnerable wishes he were otherwise. Each night he stares up at the ceiling and prays that somebody’ll find him, and every day he goes looking for them. Eventually, when he finds nothing after years and years of hopeless searching, he simply gives up; that same month, the world tries to end and he’s asked to stop it. He meets someone like him, someone who knows how Vulnerable thinks and thinks the same way, someone who is quiet and withdrawn whereas he is sarcastic and too flashy, someone who loves him for reasons Vulnerable cannot understand. And he protests to the care sometimes; he fights to not sleep and he drinks himself to unhealthy places, but Calm is somewhat the same, he finds, and he hides as well; there’s a gun in his nightstand and an explosive temper he tries in vain to control. They make a balanced match, one that is toxic for each other like Lovable and Lonely and yet can’t live without one another, like Gentle and Angelic. They fight and they cry and they love, but mostly they fall. Together.

Calm forgot about love after some certain experiences; what it felt like, what it was, what it meant. He never minded, he never does; Vulnerable looks at him with sad dark eyes that speak volumes, and Calm sees the other half of his soul in them. He reaches out, he tries to, and he makes an effort to want to live, for the helpless man in front of him who also tries too hard in vain. They are in the deepest, strangest, most uncertain kind of love, in which they could end today or tomorrow or yesterday, but will always crawl back to each other. Calm looks over at the dreaming man beside him, for once peacefully asleep in their actual bed, and he combs his fingers through Vulnerable’s hair, caressing each beautiful wrinkle. They love and they cry and they fight, but always they fall into one another’s arms.

Generous is a king. But he would never step above his people, only lead them, his fellow heroes; Deadly and Fearful he guards with his life. Insecure visits with Beautiful, and he is entranced by her; Beautiful spends the time in Fearful’s arms. Generous would assume a romance between them same as any other if he had not firsthand seen love; the connected hearts of a captain and his soldier. Insecure is attracted to Sacrificial, Generous knows, but she does not know Fearful the same as others, and so she tries to find his burdened soul and heal it; it is not her job to do so. She will realize this when Deadly wakes and takes Fearful in his arms; for now, she makes her efforts in vain and Generous watches her. She is fascinating, and he knows that if given time, he could love her deeply; there a chance she will be his queen. He would not mind.

 

_ I’m with you til the howls harmonize _

_ Til poisons raise us up to size _

_ Til acid and wine will meet their doom _

_ Til old men sleep in faded rooms _

 

It’s like the sun and the moon and the stars, a cycle, and Deadly is kind. So kind, handing flowers out to children and singing in Russian under his breath, and Fearful loves him.

 

_ I’m with you til the wonders wither _

_ Til in the fiery warmth we shiver _

_ Til death’s own contract we have signed _

_ Til ourselves to him we have resigned _

_ Til our shallow graves our friends will find _

_ I’m with you til the end of the line _ _ _

 

 

**After.**

 

_ The end of the line is coming near _

_ Borne from what we thought was fear _

_ From love and risk and sex at dawn _

_ From telling jurys right and wrong _

 

Deadly slowly, surely, remembers who he is. He falls in love all over again with Fearful, happy to find that he’s still there; he loves Sacrificial too, all too much. When their time comes, it’s together, as til the end of the line they said; Fearful goes first in an explosion, his body covered in burns and scars that won’t heal as his chest stops its rising and falling, and Deadly puts a bullet in his own head. Fearful is waiting for him at the gates, as it would seem, and is too relieved to be angry, at first, but later he is; he is the storm brewing in Deadly’s grey eyes and Deadly loves him.

Fearful doesn’t fight it when his time comes. He fills his last breaths with promises and hopes and dreams, and when the world finally goes black for good, he hopes he’s not going to wake up seventy years in the future this time. Courageous is at the gates, smiling; she opens her arms and he runs into them, picking her up and spinning her around, and she laughs. He pulls back and looks her over; god, she’s as beautiful as the day he lost her. Then suddenly he looks up as the light around them turns gold, and Deadly’s standing there, young but still scarred, and Steve rushes towards him, kissing him as hard as he can; he says nothing. He doesn’t have to. They know.

Courageous watches their reunion. It’s been two minutes since they’ve died, or seventy-three years, depending on how you look at it, and yet they can’t seem to taste enough of each other as if they’ve gone days without the water of the other’s lips. They then turn back to her, arms wrapped tight around each other, and she considers for a moment. Then, she closes her eyes and fades into the golden lights; she’s waited for long enough, now is her time to rest. They’ll be happy without her, she knows they can be. They should be.

 

_ The end of the line is approaching fast _

_ Until my dying breath we’ll last _

_ From burning candles into flames _

_ From brightened eyes snuffed out by rain _

 

Beautiful doesn’t die without reason; it’s her or him. For anyone else, she would’ve chosen herself, but it’s Forgiving, and she couldn’t stand to see him go before her; he’s too good. He’s always been too kind, too wonderful, too accepting, and so she forces her fate onto him; she makes him choose himself. The last thing she sees is his reassuring, pained smile, as he’s trying to for her through the tears, and she smiles back. She feels her heart slow, but for once in her life isn’t afraid; she owes him a debt, anyway.

Forgiving lives five days further in the battle than his lover, his Beautiful, and he doesn’t die of his own doing; he’s proud of that. She died for him, and would’ve hated him to die for her, he knows as much as he aches and wishes; he dies fighting an alien king, and they triumph in that battle, then frown and count their losses. In silence, as up in the sky; he holds Beautiful in his arms as they watch the aftermath of a battle in a war they will inevitably lose.

Angelic is already dead. He falls again, however, as the enemy shreds his wings and he crashes and his eyes close and the afterlife leaves him. He wakes up back in familiarity, with a green-eyed girl beside him and feeding him medicine, he looks behind him and his wings are healed, but scarred beyond belief, and he begins to weep. There is no hope for an angel without its wings; he is fallen, now. There could not be anything worse.

_ The end of the line is advancing closer _

_ To march on with wounds that by day grow grosser _

_ From foggy mountains laced with snow _

_ From arms that no one knows where go _

 

Magical is too young to die, but she doesn’t mind. Her brother didn’t have enough years either, but he went same as she, and she’ll at least see him again. So soon, but she’s had a lifetime of pain, to leave behind her now. He’s waiting for her, ever so open and tender, and she can see the scars on his chest from the bullet holes; she lets loose a sob and runs towards him, and he envelopes her in his arms, kissing her head and keeping her close. She weeps for the years they’ve lost, and he cries for the ones she has.

Protective takes too long to answer when she asks him how it feels to die. Back then, when things were safe, and she thought the world of him, and that he knew all there was to know; truthfully, he knew how to live. He doesn’t know now, considering how long he’s waited; he knows patience very well. Too many days have passed without her in his arms. He knows she has been well taken care of, and well loved, but she has strained too long for his touch. He will not make her wait any longer, though he wishes she had a million more years without him, if it would mean she lived.

Considerate has not known death. He has seen it, but he has not felt it, yet as Magical leaves this world, he suddenly understands; hit with an unimaginable grief, he staggers on and knows he’ll be the last to leave. What he did to deserve such a punishment, he is not sure, but at the very least he won’t die in vain. He’ll avenge her until the very bittersweet end. He does, and only silence is heard as the war ends and the last warrior falls; no one is left to surrender. So victory is had instead.

 

_ The end of the line is sprinting now _

_ Leaping across the ships’ open bough _

_ From times we kissed and then ignored _

_ From evenings you spent saying lord _

 

Gentle dies only a few days into the fight; Fearful and Deadly are immediately by his side when he streaks down towards the ground. He only has time to whisper a few questions and promises and reassurances before he passes, and rises straight up to those golden clouds. His angel shoots up from the battlefield below, without pausing to grieve over his body, and slams into Gentle’s arms like a hurricane’s tears to windows and doors. They kiss and caress, holding to each other tight, and they pay no mind to the war still raging below them, though they probably should. Only eyes for each other, as every movie and song lyric will tell you, and they say nothing because they’ve never had to and they never will.

Lovable and Lonely can’t die. They’ll just keep reappearing and resurrecting over and over until the universe ceases to exist. And so they watch all their friends and past lovers stop breathing, only finding comfort in one another’s arms; they fall asleep at night in their broken bed, on opposite sides. They kiss and make up and fight and break up and forever suffer with and without each other, torturing the other with their very presence and absence; too long it’s been since they’ve known what happiness was.

Insecure grew up with an aunt who was famous and better than she could ever dream of being, and even from the start of her younger years she knew she would one day be a queen. And maybe she never got to marry him, but she fell hard in love with a king, that’s for sure. Dying in her arms, and ever the romantic, she followed him later, only a few days after he’d sacrificed himself for her; she felt the breath leave her as the aliens entranced her with a poisonous rose. In love, she fell, and into heaven she climbed. He was waiting.

 

_ The end of the line is reaching out _

_ Towards all our fears and well-masked doubts _

_ From the tears cried when no one’s looking _

_ From singing birds and restless cooking _

 

Vulnerable goes out with a bang, slamming through five buildings in a row with the force of the alien king’s arm, and when he finally falls as gravity wins, he for once doesn’t rise in anger. Calm races to his side, wrenching away the iron mask, but Vulnerable’s eyes are closed and the bright blue glow in his chest has turned faint. Calm is breathing heavy, frantically kissing Vulnerable’s lips and trying to revive him; nothing. Calm may be breathing hard, but Vulnerable breathes not at all.

Calm is captured five days into the fight, taken to an underground place and beaten until he passes out; he’s too tired to turn green. He wakes up strapped to a table and tries to break out, as he feels he’s slept for a thousand years; there’s blood and wounds and cuts everywhere on his body, and none of his skin is green anymore. He’s a human, and so he dies as a human would; they forget about him, and he starves and scratches gashes in his skin with his jagged nails, but the blood doesn’t cure his thirst.

Generous can’t find too many ways to regret his death. He dies when he steps in front of Insecure, a split-second decision, and the sword pierces through his heart instead of hers. He collapses, knees buckling as she screams; she falls to her knees next to him and lifts his head in her hands, gently caressing his cheek, and they smile at each other. It’s a last love confession, and he dies with her lips on his, and a week later, she’s rushing into his arms, coming through the gates like the new rays of sunshine sparkling over this imperfectly broken world. He holds her in his arms, closing his eyes and slowly swaying, spinning in a circle as she breathes heavy against his chest; he never even had to say goodbye.

 

_ The end of the line is avoiding stalls _

_ We find our paths have reached a wall _

_ From nowhere to somewhere we’ve run so far _

_ From wizards to monsters to flying cars _

 

Calm ends up in heaven when the life finally leaves him, after too many nights of praying for death; Vulnerable is alone in a fiery hell. Calm stares down at him, and loves him, and so is drawn a portrait of the end; two silhouettes forever reaching out for each other in vain.

 

_ The end of the line is coming soon _

_ Hot July nights and cold mornings in June _

_ From the future seen ahead by a worthy seer _

_ From the crowded graves of unshed tears _

_ From the wind blowing til you can’t see clear _

_ Alas, the end of the line is here _


End file.
